I guess it’s the season. More apples today, again from both sides of the Atlantic. From Britain, an invitation to Apple Days at East Malling, a celebration which will feature the (troubled?) National Fruit Collection. 1 And from the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, more news of American apple breeding, featuring David Bedford of the University of Minnesota.
A tale of two apple collections
I’ve already nibbled today’s piece in the Guardian about the UK’s National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, a “typical British story of managerial confusion and government ineptitude,” 2 but I couldn’t resist pointing out the contrast with the US apple collection at Geneva in New York, about which I also blogged recently. It does seem like they order these things better across the pond.
Coincidentally, there was also an article today about the diversity of American apples. Here it is in numbers: 2,500 named varieties grown in the country, 100 commercially, 15 accounting for 90% of the harvest.
The dizzying array today might have shocked early Americans. Just a half-dozen wild crab apple varieties awaited British colonists arriving in America in the 17th century. Thousands of hillside orchards soon were planted with the progeny of favored European varieties… like Maiden Blush, Western Beauty, Chenango Strawberry, Roxbury Russet and Westfield Seek No Further.
…“There were some real jewels among them with great flavors, rich with juices and unusual aromas,” said Tom Burford, an author, lecturer, orchard and nursery consultant from Lynchburg, Va. Burford has been dubbed “Professor Apple” for his extensive work rediscovering antique varieties previously believed extinct.
Is there a British “Professor Apple” out there who will save Brogdale? Or maybe the situation is not as bad as the Guardian piece made out? If you know, drop us a line.
Apple genebank in trouble
Will the UK’s National Fruit Collection survive?
Genebanks in the news
Are genebanks becoming sexy or something? In the past few days there have been:
- a VOA News piece on the USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit at the Geneva, NY campus of Cornell University, focusing on their world-famous apple collection;
- an article in Farm & Ranch Guide on the USDA’s Small Grains Collection at the University of Idaho’s Research and Extension Center at Aberdeed; and
- an article in Kauai Garden Island News on how to prepare breadfruit which resulted from a cook-off at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, home of the world’s largest breadfruit collection.
Amidst all the recent media frenzy about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, it is good to see “normal” genebanks also featured in the news every once in a while.
In vino veritas
Thanks to Ola Westengen for contributing this post.
Serendipity seems to be the modus operandi of this great blog and so is the case with this post. On a trip last Sunday to look at this Etruscan world heritage site outside Cerveteri I stumbled into a Sagra dell’Uva –a town festival to celebrate the grape. I took the picture shown below and had some great Cerveteri Bianco Secco before walking on to the amazing Etruscan ruins. Then back in the office I came across a news item from the latest edition of Nature about the newly published sequence of the grapevine genome. The French-Italian consortium of researchers has read the half billion letter book of life of the variety Pinot Noir.
The draft sequence of the grapevine genome is the fourth one produced so far for flowering plants, the second for a woody species and the first for a fruit crop. Grapevine was selected because of its important place in the cultural heritage of humanity beginning during the Neolithic period.
The authors cite the Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote that Mediterranean people began to emerge from ignorance when they learnt to cultivate olives and grapes. I’m still ignorant, but it is starting to dawn on me that vine buffs must be some of the best perpetuators and celebrators of agricultural biodiversity — just take a look at the variety list on Wikipedia.